When to Cite Sources

There are three circumstances under which you must provide an in-text citation. They are when you:

1. Summarize the content of source material (boil down, into your own words, what someone else said)
2. Paraphrase the content of source material (put into your own words what someone else said, yet keep it about the same length as the original)
3. Directly quote the content of source material (copy word-for-word what someone else said)

Decide which type you want to use and follow the link:

• Use a summary when the original is too long for your purposes and you want to just pull out the most important ideas in your own words. A summary is always shorter than the original.
• Use a paraphrase when the style of writing in the original does not match your own style in your essay, but the content of the source is exactly what you need. In this case, you put into your own words what the author says, and it stays about the same length as the original.
• Use a direct quote when the author says exactly what you want to say, and their writing style closely matches your own (otherwise the quote may seem out of place).

Click this link for a more extensive review of the difference between summary, paraphrase, and direct quote (MSWord doc).

For full directions on how to use APA style in-text citations, you should visit the Online Writing Lab

Responsible Authorship

Where's your input?

• Many students simply quote, summarize, and paraphrase happily, composing a paper that contains absolutely no original thinking whatsoever. Often this is because in earlier grades they were simply asked to find data and present that data without making any conclusions about what it meant.
• True research paper writing for high school and college does not simply repeat what others have said. Quality research introduces a unique position on a topic. Quality researchers look at the raw data and make conclusions and comments about it.
• After you summarize, paraphrase, or quote directly, you ought to pause and consider what you can conclude from what you've just read. "Now that you have the facts, what do those facts seem to tell you?" What does source material tell me? Quotes from a text can:

reveal

show

explain

illustrate

demonstrate

emphasize

present

establish

exhibit

expose

indicate

make evident

prove

and even validate

We use textual quotes to help support greater arguments, usually those assertions that control a main point in our paper.